The Ear in the Wall Part 38

Kennedy felt that he had scored a palpable hit. Dorgan was speechless.

Still, Craig hurried on.

"But, you may ask, how about the automobile picture? That also is an unblushing fake. Of course I must prove that. In the first place you know that the general public has come to recognize the distortion of a photograph as denoting speed. A picture of a car in a race that doesn't lean is rejected. People demand to see speed, speed, more speed, even in pictures. Distortion does indeed show speed, but that, too, can be faked.

"Almost everyone knows that the image is projected upside down by the lens on the plate, and that the bottom of the picture is taken before the top. The camera mechanism admits light, which makes the picture, in the manner of a roller blind curtain. The slit travels from the top to the bottom and, the image on the plate being projected upside down, the bottom of the object appears on the top of the plate. For instance, the wheels are taken before the head of the driver. If the car is moving quickly, the image moves on the plate and each successive part is taken a little in advance of the last. The whole leans forward. By widening the slit and slowing the speed of the shutter, there is more distortion.

"Now, that is just what has been done. A picture has been taken of a car owned once by Murtha, probably at rest, with perhaps yourself, Murtha, Mrs. Ogleby, and your friend in it. The matter of faking Carton or anyone else is simple. If, with an enlarging lantern, the image of this faked picture is thrown on the printing paper like a lantern slide, and if the right-hand side is moved a little further away than the left, the top further away than the bottom, you can in that way print a fraudulent high-speed picture ahead.

"True, everything else in the picture, even if motionless, is distorted, and the difference between this faking and the distortion of the shutter can be seen by an expert. But it will pa.s.s with most people. In this case, however," added Kennedy suddenly, "the faker was so sure of it that he was careless. Instead of getting the plate further from the paper on the right, he did so on the left. It was further away on the bottom than on the top. He got the distortion, all right, enough to satisfy anyone. But it is distortion in the wrong direction! The top of the wheel, which goes fastest and ought to be most indistinct, is, in the fake, as sharp as any other part. It is a small mistake that was made, but fatal. Your picture is not of a joy ride at all. It is really high speed--backwards! It is too raw, too raw."

"You don't think people are going to swallow all that stuff, do you?"

asked Dorgan coolly, in spite of the exposures. "What of it all?" he asked surlily. "I have nothing to do with it, anyhow. Why do you come to me? Take it to the proper authorities."

"Shall I?" asked Kennedy quietly, leaning over and whispering a few words in Dorgan's ear. I could not hear what he said, but Dorgan appeared to be fairly staggered.

When Kennedy pa.s.sed out of the Boss's office there was a look of quiet satisfaction on his face which I could not fathom. Not a word could I extract from him on the subject, either. I was still in the dark as to the result of his visit.

XXIV

THE DEBACLE OF DORGAN

Sunday morning came and with it the huge batch of papers which we always took. I looked at them eagerly, though Kennedy did not seem to evince much interest, to see whether the Carton photographs had been used. There were none.

Kennedy employed the time in directing some work of his own and had disappeared, I knew not where, though I surmised it was on one of his periodic excursions into the underworld in which he often knocked about, collecting all sorts of valuable and interesting bits of information to fit together in the mosaic of a case.

Monday came, also, the last day before the election, with its lull in the heart-breaking activities of the campaign. There were still no pictures published, but Kennedy was working in the laboratory over a peculiar piece of apparatus.

"I've been helping out my own shadows," was all the explanation he vouchsafed of his disappearances, as he continued to work.

"Watching Mrs. Ogleby?" I hinted.

"No, I didn't interfere any more with Miss Kendall. This was someone else--in another part of the city."

He said it with an air that seemed to imply that I would learn all about it shortly and I did not pursue the subject.

Meanwhile, he was arranging something on the top of a large, flat table. It seemed to be an instrument in two parts, composed of many levers and discs and magnets, each part with a roll of paper about five inches wide.

On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary gla.s.s tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles to each other.

It was quite like old times to see Kennedy at work in his laboratory again, and I watched him curiously. Two sets of wires were attached to each of the instruments, and they led out of the window to some other wires which had been strung by telephone linemen only a few hours before.

Craig had scarcely completed his preparations when Carton arrived.

Things were going all right in the campaign again, I knew, at least as far as appeared on the surface. But his face showed that Carton was clearly dissatisfied with what Craig had apparently accomplished, for, as yet, he had not told Carton about his discovery after studying the photographs, and matters between Carton and Margaret Ashton stood in the same strained condition that they had when last we saw her.

I must say that I, too, was keenly disappointed by the lack of developments in this phase of the case. Aside from the fact that the photographs had not actually been published, the whole thing seemed to me to be a mess. What had Craig said to Dorgan? Above all, what was his game? Was he playing to spare the girl's feelings merely by allowing the election to go on without a scandal to Carton? I knew the result of the election was now the least of Carton's worries.

Carton did not say much, but he showed that he thought it high time for Kennedy to do something.

We were seated about the flat table, wondering when Kennedy would break his silence, when suddenly, as if by a spirit hand, the stylus before us began to move across one of the rolls of paper.

We watched it uncomprehendingly.

At last I saw that it was actually writing the words. "How is it working?"

Quickly Craig seized the stylus on the lower part of the instrument and wrote in his characteristic scrawl, "All right, go ahead."

"What is the thing?" asked Carton, momentarily forgetting his own worries at the new marvel before us.

"An instrument that was invented many years ago, but has only recently been perfected for practical, every-day use, the telautograph, the long-distance writer," replied Kennedy, as we waited. "You see, with what amounts to an ordinary pencil I have written on the paper of the transmitter. The silk cord attached to the pencil regulates the current which controls another capillary gla.s.s tube-pen at the other end of the line. The receiving pen moves simultaneously with my stylus. It is the same principle as the pantagraph, cut in half as it were, one half here, the other half at the other end of the line, two telephone wires in this case connecting the halves. Ah,--that's it. The pencil of the receiving instrument is writing again. Just a moment. Let us see what it is."

I almost gasped in astonishment at the words that I saw. I looked again, for I could not believe my eyes. Still, there it was. My first glance had been correct, impossible as it was.

"I, Patrick Murtha," wrote the pen.

"What is it?" asked Carton, awestruck. "A dead hand?"

"Stop a minute," wrote Kennedy hastily.

We bent over him closely. Craig had drawn from a packet several letters, which he had evidently secured in some way from the effects of Murtha. Carefully, minutely, he compared the words before us with the signatures at the bottom of the letters.

"It is genuine!" he cried excitedly.

"Genuine!" Carton and I echoed.

What did he mean? Was this some kind of spiritism? Had Kennedy turned medium and sought a message from the other world to solve the inexplicable problems of this? It was weird, uncanny, unthinkable. We turned to him blankly for an explanation of the mystery.

"That wasn't Murtha at all whose body we saw at the Morgue," he hurried to explain. "That was all a frame-up. I thought as soon as I saw it that there was something queer."

I recalled now the peculiar look on his face which I had interpreted as indicating that he thought Murtha had been the victim of foul play.

"And the other night, when we were in Carton's office and someone called up threatening you, Carton, and Dopey Jack, I saw at once that the voice was concealed. Yet there was something about it that was familiar, though I couldn't quite place it. I had heard that voice before, perhaps while we were getting the records to discover the 'wolf.' It occurred to me that if I had a record of it I might identify it by comparing it with those we had already taken. I got the record. I studied it. I compared it with what I already had, line, and wave, and overtone. You can imagine how I felt when I found there was only one voice with which it corresponded, and that man was supposed to be dead.

Something more than intuition as I looked at the body that night had roused my suspicions. Now they were confirmed. Fancy how that information must have burned in my mind, during these days while I knew that Murtha was alive, but could say nothing!"

Neither Carton nor I could say a word as we thought of this voice from the dead, as it almost seemed.

"I hadn't found him," continued Craig, "but I knew he had used a pay station on the West Side. I began shadowing everyone who might have helped him, Dorgan, Kahn, Langhorne, all. I didn't find him. They were too clever. He was hiding somewhere in the city, a changed personality, waiting for the thing to blow over. He knew that of all places a city is the best to hide in, and of all cities New York is safest.

"But, though I didn't actually find his hiding place, I had enough on some of his friends so that I could get word to him that his secret was known to me, at least. I made him an offer of safety. He need not come out of his hiding place and I would agree to let him go where and when he pleased without further pursuit from me, if he would let me install a telautograph in a neutral place which he could select and the other end in this laboratory. I myself do not know where the other place is.

Only a mechanic sworn to secrecy knows and neither Murtha nor myself know him. If Murtha comes across, I have given my word of honour that before the world he shall remain a dead man, free to go where he pleases and enjoy such of his fortune as he was able to fix so that he could carry it with him into his new life."

Carton and I were entranced by the romance of the thing.

Murtha was alive!